Tag Archives | Martin McGuinness

As the John Hewitt gets under way today, the summer school season had already been launched in Glenties. I spent a few days in the area the previous week so I missed out on this year’s Magill summer school which was as usual these days, highly political. On Brexit you can have too much of more…

A unique coincidence of events Standing back, it’s easy enough to see why the latest Assembly crisis is the longest and most intractable for over a decade. Unusually in recent times and in sharp contrast to the heady days of the Good Friday Agreement, this breakdown is set against background of momentous upheaval which more…

Say what you like about social media but the old fashioned papers are hard to beat to bring you the feel of the last minute election atmosphere. They’re all the more frantic for the polls being all over the place and late tragic dominance of “ keeping us safe.” Later still, the Guardian’s monster more…

Coming soon after so much painful reappraisal that accompanied the death and burial of Martin McGuinness, a tribute from Peter Taylor to a man who was unambiguously a peacemaker, as reported in the Irish Times. Broadcaster Peter Taylor – who revealed Mr Duddy’s role as an intermediary between the IRA and the British government more…

It is remarkable, in an age of sophisticated back channels and espionage replete with digital and satellite communications, how a modest domestic background figured so significantly in the moves which eventually led to the ceasefires – and all the more effectively for it. The problem was how to establish trust when contacts had to be more…

COLIN BATEMAN’S screenplay for The Journey presents a highly fictionalised account that explores what the early conversations may have been like between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness as they worked towards agreement at the St Andrews talks.

John Ware’s BBC Panorama investigation on Freddie Scappaticci, The Spy in the IRA, is available online, with an accompanying article on the BBC website. Ed Moloney has some relevant posts on his blog on the programme, including criticism of the initial response by processors in the media to Liam Clarke’s scoop when he broke the story in more…

In an interview with Sky News on the eve of the resumed interparty talks, Gerry Adams addresses familiar charges levelled against him by more than unionists. In a move clearly designed to win greater trust, the Sinn Fein president is at pains to deny that he is raising the bar so high as to more…

Sorry to keep on, but I think this from Chris Dillow not only gets the balance right on McGuinness’s legacy, he also gets something right about the inscrutable nature of democratic politics that we would do well to take more account of: …a closer analogy with McGuinness’s change, is the role Lyndon Johnson played in more…

Jenny McCartney makes up both for some of the more anodyne hagiography and avoids the pitfalls of some of the more un-contextualised moral outrage by rooting her analysis in the lived reality of the IRA Army Council’s (failed) Long War strategy… Belfast in the 1970s and ’80s was a grey, fortified city, compelling in many ways, but permanently charged more…

“Of all the ‘moments’ in my 27 years of journalism, applause for Arlene Foster at the funeral of Martin McGuinness is right up there”. So remarked Sky News’s Ireland correspondent, David Blevins, after one of Northern Ireland’s most important funerals in years. Blevins wasn’t alone in being wrong-footed by this turn of events. This was, more…

Worth listening to Peter Robinson’s thoughts on working with Martin McGuinness: While the media obsessed over any difficulty or disagreement that from time to time would arise because of our distinct political mandates we would have been sitting down seeking to find a solution or working out how we would manage the differences. There never more…

So what’s the legacy? His contribution to underlying peace not war was essential, certainly. In the welter of well- rehearsed comment yesterday we can be thankful that there was no suggestion of regression, rather the opposite from the likes of Gerry Kelly. But in politics? To adapt Ian Paisley jnr’s tribute “It’s not how you more…

By way of a quick round up on reactions yesterday, I’ll start with my own thoughts on the Irish Times Inside Politics podcast above. Personally, I liked what I encountered of him, but then the only Martin McGuinness I knew was the public peacemaker. The accounts we’ve been hearing describe two different people, each as more…

Although I may be speaking too soon, it comes as a relief that the traditional Irish decencies are being observed on the death of Martin McGuinness, not only on merit but for the sake of preserving relations between the DUP and Sinn Fein. It’s too early to speculate how his death will affect the interparty more…

So the political establishment and the media are in rare unison praising Martin McGuinness. Illness and the shadow of death – ordinary decent, natural sickness and intimations of mortality – bring out the sentimentalist in all types of the Irish people. Let’s not be too starry eyed. In a longish apologia for the different phases more…

It will take a while to gather thoughts on the retirement of the estimable former deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness. Firstly, Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: He played a key role in moving the republican movement towards a position of using peaceful and democratic means. I want to send more…